#like if you need lesbians gays bisexuals transgenders and for the main couple to have a third partner for it to qualify as actually queer

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

Every time I see someone acting like OFMD caters to straight people or is innoffensive or that the show isn't unapologetically queer enough their arguments always seem to amount to "No real queer rep has ever existed in history" when taken to it's logical conclusion. Like they gave us a rom com about gay men which included a nonbinary character who just was nonbinary and didn't explain themselves to the audience and then people immediately started saying "but they don't even have lesbians" because that's the knit pick for a show that takes place in a male dominated setting (a pirate ship) and the crew was like "Ok heard here's some lesbians" and then the goalpost shifted to "the polyamory wasn't poly enough" (are Jackie and Husbands chopped liver to you girl?) And at this point we're one intersex person away from the whole fucking LGBTQIA acronym, one of the characters has successfully transitioned into a fucking bird, there was an entire drag show, and we haven't seen a single named heterosexual character in 8 entire episodes. Like I'm sorry if this is not gay enough for you then nothing is.

[coochiequeens]

Men are holding conferences to discuss how to have a child without a legal mother. Women opposed to surrogacy need to start organizing.

A national surrogacy organization will host a conference and expo—aimed at gay couples and individuals wishing to learn about surrogacy and gay parents that have already used surrogacy strategies—at Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted St., from June 2-3.

New York City-based Men Having Babies (MHB) is organizing the event.

Yanir Dekel, MHB's Los Angeles-based Marketing & Social Media Coordinator, explained that MHB originated at New York City's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, where a group of gay men wishing to become biological parents began meeting in the mid-2000's.

"Up until then, it was expected that you would adopt—doing [in-vitro fertilization] was something that lesbians would do," said Dekel.

The group began bringing in speakers who instructed participants on ethical surrogacy strategies. Around the world, surrogacy is tied into national and local rights issues—LGBTQ+ individuals might be prohibited from attempting surrogacy, for example, while women who become surrogates might have few legal rights.

MHB "wanted to be human-rights advocates and make our own families," Dekel said, adding that the group developed "out of the needs of the community. We're a community organization. We're not a surrogacy agency. We're a non-profit organization."

The urge to have biological children is a human trait from which gay men are often not exempt, he explained.

"They want to see their their genes moving forward," Dekel added. "For me and my husband, we wanted two kids, and with the same egg donor. One of them is my biological [child] and the other is my husband's. To me, I saw it as a biological connection between my husband and myself."

Some couples and individuals are motivated to choose surrogacy by the lack of control they would have were they to pursue adoption as their main route for having children.

"You have to wait for other people to want you—it's not a proactive thing that you can make happen," said Dekel. "People are waiting two or three years, and eventually become tired of waiting. They say, 'I want to have control over the process. I'm going to do it myself.'"

MHB generally has conferences in seven or eight locations nationwide, as well as in cities such as Brussels, Berlin, Taipei and Tel Aviv.

"We're going where people have need [for information," Dekel said. "In America, we're trying to expand our work. … We're trying to serve the community across the board."

An important part of MHB's advocacy is not only instructing the community about surrogacy, but keeping gay parents in social networks with one another.

"As a gay dad myself, I want my kids to see families that look like ours, and I want to hang out with gay men whom I can talk about gay stuff with—talking about Mariah Carey, for example," Dekel explained. "I cannot talk about that with straight guys."

[chaifootsteps]

I need your opinion on something. So, I'm reading this book caller Small Town Big Magic, but Hazel Beck. Basically, the book is about a girl who finds out she's a witch and that basically everyone in town is a witch, and that the reason that she doesn't remember is cause she had her memory wiped cause her powers weren't strong enough, and now she and her friend have to find a way to stop a flood powered by dark magic from destroying the town.

SO. I have a bit of a complaint about this book, but I'm trying to decide if this is actually the books fault or not. I got this book from the LBGT+ section of a bookstore, and one of the quotes/reviews/promos/whatever on the front of the book states that it's about a "Diverse coven of witches..."

So, when I hear that a book is about a diverse coven of witches, and it's in the LGBT+ section, I kinda start expecting a lot. Gay/lesbian witches, bisexual witches, Transgender or Nonbinary witches, maybe if nothing else, POC characters, right?.... but that's not what I got. There's no real character descriptions for anyone. All we get is some hair colors, one characters eye color and height, a couple of clothing descriptions, etc. Hell, some characters don't get any kinda of description at all. I guess it could be just left up to the audicenes perseption, but in that case, it could be assumed that they're all white.

And from what we can tell, none of them are lgbt. The girls all seem to be attracted to guys. The guys seem to be attracted to girls. From the looks of it, they're all straight. The closest thing we get to anything even close to hinting a character might not be straight is that the main character mentions that she "planned to eventually look for a partner.", which, seeing as she said partner and not man or boyfriend, COULD suggest that she's bi or pan??? I guess? But that's literally all we get. Because of the rest of the book, she's silently simping over a gruff, pessimistic farmer guy that she's been crushing on since high school.

This could be seen as false advertising on the authors part... except, the description of the book itself doesn't actually say anything about the coven being diverse. It just says that they're a found family and that the main character is working through her feelings about gruff farmer guy. There's no mention of lgbt themes or anything. From the description, it seems like the author is possibly nonbinary and polyamorous, as the description uses they/them pronouns and are said to have two husband's. So, THAT could be why the book was in the LGBT section, even though most of the books there usually have SOME lgbt themes included in the story themselves.

In the end, I'm not sure if I should criticize the book for this or the advertising. Maybe I looked too much into the 'diverse coven of witches' line, or maybe the book was stored in the wrong section in the book store. How much control did the author really have over what reviews were put on the book.

Do you think it is fair to criticize the book and story itself over this, or if it's more the fault of the advertising and placement?

Damn, that sucks. Maybe it gets diverse later, but from the sounds of it, you called it -- it's diverse in the sense that it's supposed to be a mixed bag of characters personality-wise (which also doesn't sound true) and written by someone who's LGBT, maybe.

It sounds like an advertising problem for sure. I wouldn't burn the book over it or anything, especially if it's enjoyable aside from that, but I'd definitely be annoyed too. I don't care how many husbands an author has, if I'm shopping in the LGBT+ section, I wanna see some gays.

[hellomynameisbisexual]

“QUEER”

First of all, let’s clear up a common misconception. Queer does not just mean gay. It’s an umbrella term for an identity which deviates from society’s perceived norm: heterosexual, or straight. Queer can refer to sexualities — gay, bisexual, pansexual, — or it can refer to being gender-queer; i.e, any label that deviates from the perceived gender norm: the binaries, male and female.

“Queer” is a reclaimed slur.

If you do not fall under the umbrella of queerness, it is safe to assume that you cannot use it. At all.

I am bisexual.

This means I experience attraction to plural genders. Pansexual also works fine. For the difference between bisexual and pansexual — see here:

Being bisexual isn’t easy. I went through similar hardships to gay women: I experienced attraction to women and was scared of what this meant for me, in such an oppressively homophobic society.

I am not saying being bisexual is harder than being gay, nor the inverse. But my experiences are distinctly bisexual, not gay.

Without further ado, here are the 3 things I’ve found to be the hardest about being queer, but not gay (enough).

#1: Finding My Place

Or, not being queer enough

I always knew I wasn’t straight, but I didn’t know what I was. Up until recently, I was still questioning. This didn’t feel enough to join groups or conversations with LGBT+ folk, let alone go to pride. Was I even LGBT if I was never L, G, B, or T?

I am still yet to attend a pride, even though I identify (fairly confidently) as bisexual. I am in a relationship with a man. This is (problematically) known as a “straight-passing relationship” and makes me feel even more undeserving of a place at pride.

This has been upsetting to me at times. But for others, it can be outright devastating. Growing up and needing support, but feeling like you’re ‘not gay enough’ to ask for it? So many young people are being left alone and afraid. Finding others like you is vital to figuring out who you are. Likewise, finding spaces which are safe and inclusive is vital for anyone, regardless of their sexuality or gender identity. A friend of mine happens to be a transgender man, and he summed up the issue perfectly:

“One thing that I keep noticing is how all hangout spots are “gay bars”, or (far less common) “lesbian bars”. I’m a straight man, so I don’t feel like I’m supposed to be there, but hanging out at regular bars is still too much of a gamble, so I don’t really have anywhere to go.”

It goes without saying that gay folk aren’t always safe in these spaces, as seen by the homophobic attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, in 2016. Bigotry hurts the entire LGBT+ community. Bigotry doesn’t stop to ask whether you identify as gay or otherwise queer before it pulls the trigger.

But the LGBT+ community itself is much more welcoming to those who “pick a side” and just come out as gay, already. The infighting is inexplicable when one looks to attacks such as that in Orlando: bigots don’t care which letter you are in the acronym. So why does gatekeeping exist when we need to be strong in the face of intolerance when fragmentation only makes us weaker? Who are we helping by continuing to exclude identities from the discussion?

#2: Myths and Misconceptions

Well, it stands to reason that if bisexuals are what they seem in TV and movies, why would anyone want to make them feel included? They’re “greedy” and inauthentic. They’re attention-seeking, not to mention their propensity for threesomes. Now, I haven’t been in a wild orgy yet, but it seems like it will only be a matter of time before I follow my natural path.

Straight men, in particular, need to own up to their assumption that bisexual women are down for a threesome. The thing is, we are. But not with you, you big ASSUMER.

Infidelity

All jokes aside, the stereotyping of bisexuals is not only hurtful, but leads to difficulties finding and maintaining relationships.

As I came to terms with my bisexuality, I also had to accept that I might never be fully trusted by my partner, regardless of their gender or sexuality. I was shocked when my partner reacted to my coming out with the equivalent of a shrug — so much so, that I burst into tears of gratitude that my soul-bearing moment hadn’t been met with slut-shaming or assumptions of disloyalty. Nothing has changed. If anything, our bond is even stronger for me having been more authentic after coming out.

But cruelty came from elsewhere: when I came out, I was told that my partner was to be pitied, either because I’m gay and in denial, or bound to cheat on him. The main consequence of such attitudes has been the crippling fear of coming out to my partner. It saddens me that I felt so relieved when he accepted me for being who I am, and loving him just the same as I always have.

This outcome is not the case for many couples, with straight folk worried that their bisexual partner will realise they’re gay and just leave them. This fear of abandonment comes from a place of ignorance. When the media presents bisexuality as a steppingstone on the way to “picking a team”, it’s no wonder that people struggle to trust their queer partners.

Other Queer Myths

The myth that all trans folk medically transition invalidates those who choose not to do so, and let’s not forget the ignorant jeers that it's all just a mental illness. Asexual folk battle the stereotype that they can never have a relationship and shall forever remain a virgin (because what an awful thing that would be, right?) And pansexuals… well, at the lighter end, they’re asked if they have sex with cooking utensils. But often, they’re erased as irrelevant because “we already have the label bisexual”.

This brings us onto the third and final difficulty that comes with queer folk who aren’t easily categorizable as gay: erasure.

#3: Erasure

Erasure refers to the denial of an identity’s existence or its validity as a label.

Non-binary folk face ongoing and loud claims that they simply do not exist. This is despite the historical and scientific evidence to the contrary. Plus, the most important evidence — them, existing. Asexual folk are told they simply have not found the right person yet, or that they are just afraid of sex. Demi-sexual folk are told “everyone feels like that, unless they’re just sleeping around!”. And bisexuals are dismissed as simply being in denial that they’re gay.

Monosexuality & The Gender Binary

Our culture is so built on monosexuality (being solely attracted to one gender — for instance, gay or straight). Monosexuality is reinforced through everything from marriage to dating apps, the media to what we teach in schools. People cannot fathom that someone might want to experience more than one gender in their lifetime.

The binary models of sex and gender are also deeply ingrained. These rigid belief systems combined are to blame for our inability to accept that bisexuals do not need to “pick a side”. I was paralysed by fear for 17 years because I found girls attractive and that might mean I’m gay, because bisexuals are just gays who haven’t realised they’re gay yet.

Bierasure

Bierasure is dangerous, firstly because it leads a child to have to internalise both biphobia and homophobia. For instance, I had to work through being taught to hate gayness, whilst being taught that any attraction to non-male genders made me gay.

Women were cute, and so I was gay, and this meant I was disgusting.

My own mother told me this. She also told me that something has “gone wrong in the womb” for a child to be gay. (Well, Mum, I’ve got some bad news about your womb!)And she, like any bigot, extended this theory to anyone who experiences same-sex attractions — anyone queer. This is another reason why bi-erasure is perilous. Whether you’re a gay, cis-male or a demi-bisexual, trans woman… if your parents will kick you out for being gay, they will likely kick you out for being any sort of queer.

If we deny the bigotry that bisexuals undergo, we will continue to suffer. It won’t just go away. It will fester, with bisexuals having no one they can go to who believes them. And thus:

Erasure Kills

Bullying and suicide rates of queer-but-not-gay people continue to sky-rocket. We must direct funding, support and compassion to every queer individual, as they are all vulnerable to discrimination and bullying. The problem is being left to fester. This is in part because bigots treat all queer labels as just ‘gay’, deeming them equally unworthy. This is how far erasure can go.

Conclusion

Earlier on, I stated that my experiences are distinctly bisexual. The same applies to any queer identity.

Emphasising our differing paths and struggles is important to avoid the aforementioned erasure of already less visible groups. But this does not mean that the LGBT+ community should be fragmented by these differences.

If we can unite in our hope to live authentically and love freely, we will be stronger against bigotry. We are fighting enough intolerance from without: there is no need to create more from within.

So out of everything, what’s the hardest part about being bisexual?

It’s the fact that nobody knows it’s this hard.

[abanomath]

DC’s Tone Deafness

So I don’t really like ranting or being negative, but DC Universe recently released an article to celebrate pride month about the Top 5 canon and non-canon LGBTQA+ relationships in Young Justice.

And the tone deafness is just off the charts. Like most of the world, I’m not American so I needed someone to screen-cap the actual article for me. I’m going to organize my thoughts and go down below.

General

For one, its pretty obvious the writer didn’t look at the source material. This article sounds like it was written by someone filled in on the basics and told to write a good PR article for DC.

There are a lot of little details in the story, such as when the writer claims that they “showcased even more LGBTQA+ protagonists in season 3″ implying they had previously, which they hadn’t. One character was implied to be bisexual in the comics, never on screen, but more on that below. Season 3 was the first LGBTQA+ rep for the show.

Also its always a bit tone deaf when in an article celebrating LGBTQA+ and diversity in your show, that you have a list of 5 “ships”, of which only ONE is actually a couple in canon. Not only did they need to resort to non-canon ones, they included people that can’t be called a “ship” or couple.

1. Kaldur/Wyynde

This is the only actual LGBTQA+ couple on the list that is canon in the show, and I liked them. But I can’t deny that Kaldur who was a main cast member for the past two season’s had a vastly reduced role (compared to straight cis white characters like Dick and Conner). He was basically written out of the first half of the season, and then his relationship was really present for 1.5 - 2 episodes max. This in a season that was marked with excessive attention given to heterosexual relationships (like seriously, basically every character was in some form of relationship on-screen). The one healthy LGBTQA relationship got less attention than Black Lightning and Dr. Jace’s romance, something that ultimately went nowhere, Dick/Barbara, even Megan/Conner when Megan was also essentially written out of the season.

2. Marie Logan and Rita Farr

They really dug deep for this “ship”. Ironically, they start this by talking about the scene in Young Justice #25, when Queen B’s powers work on Garfield’s mother. This was the first implication her being bisexual. And of course, she also dies in this scene, so starting off with a “Bury your gays” trope where Marie’s queerness literally got her killed and orphaned her son.

There isn’t much more to say about this ship, because it literally doesn’t exist. The shipping community for this is so small you have to go digging deep into tags to find even hints of it. The article even basically says this, posing the ship as a question. As being interesting. (Does it count as Bury Your Gays when both woman are dead before their relationship is even hinted at?)

In other words this article about celebrating LGBTQA ships literally had to try and CREATE A SHIP to reach 5 ships. Despite the fact there are plenty of LGBTQ fanon ships (Birdflash being the most prominent one left off the list). It really hits at the thing I said above, this is a “write us a good PR article with the barest amount of effort put into it” situation.

3. Harper Row and Halo

Oh boy don’t get me started on this. There are so many problems with how they did Halo this season, she is basically tone deaf personified. (For the purpose of this rant, I’ll be using the “she” pronouns for Halo, because I have no choice but to assume they are her preference, unless the show purposely spent the entire season mis-gendering her, but I don’t think her characterization really supports that she prefers “her/she”).

I’ve had a problem with Halo from the start, because she is basically an attempt for the writers to shallowly include representation without having to actually deal with it. She is Muslim representation, but not actually Muslim (as she confirms on the show). She wears the Hijab because she feels like it. She is genderqueer, but they never once talk about her pronouns. She refers to herself as “not feeling like a boy or a girl” and constantly refers to herself in the third person, but everyone uses “she/her” pronouns without asking her. They even have a scene where she informs them she is genderqueer, and its never brought up again without asking any actual follow up questions or awareness. They also infantalize and treat her as a little girl.

Additionally, she falls into one of my greatest pet peeves - she is genderqueer but for fantasy-scifi reasons. For those that follow genderqueer or transgender characters in media, this is a very common trope. Essentially, the trope is when someones gender identity is caused by/determined from otherworldly experiences.

This trope bugs me because it completely undermines the point of representation. Representation in media is supposed to show the audience that these are natural human experiences and that people like this exist and are normal. But the trope ensures that the experiences are not normal human experiences.

(and don’t even get me started on the fact that this show has made New Genesis tech gendered before, with Sphere. And even gender the bioship in the same season they pull this for Halo).

Lastly, she also falls within the “promiscuous bisexual” trope, with the very kiss this article praises as THE FIRST LGBT KISS ON SCREEN for the show. This is a problematic trope that DC seems to love. Basically, this scene has Halo cheating on her boyfriend with another young classmate, engaging in two kisses with her.

Now I’m not going to say that all LGBTQA+ relationships need to be wholesome one true loves. Problematic behaviour like Halo and Harper’s is a story telling tool. But the fact that the LGBTQA+ was told going into the season there would be LGBT rep so they should watch, and this was the first rep we got 18 episodes into the season? It felt a bit like a slap in the face. They could’ve had her break up with Brion beforehand, or any number of different ways that would even keep the scene in tact.

And the relationship doesn’t really go anywhere anyways. Harper doesn’t really remain part of the season going forward, Halo and her boyfriend continue their relationship after it was revealed until the end of the season.

This is ultimately my problem with Halo. There are a few tropes that basically are summed up as “writers put all their diversity into one character” which is basically what Halo is. Each of these qualities, from faith to gender identity to sexual orientation could’ve been a fleshed out character arc (oh! I forgot to mention she also falls into the “My gender identity isn’t cis, so my sexual orientation is also bi/pan/gay” trope). Instead all the diverse qualities of Halo are addressed shallowly as the show-runners pat themselves on the back.

4. Bluepulse

I’ve ranted a lot so I’m not going to go crazy on this point. You can probably find tons of posts about the drama between Bluepulse Shippers and the show, which again makes their inclusion kind of tone-deaf. Bluepulse shippers have been called disgusting by the fandom for the three year age gap, an age gap that was never confirmed on screen and you had to go digging in Greg’s personal message board to know (resulting in many people shipping them not knowing their ages at all).

In addition, the showrunners made it clear they did not like this ship over the several years the show has been off the air. And in Season 3 they give Jaime a girlfriend….who is a lesbian in the comics. Now Traci and Jaime did date in the comics before she came out, and this is another Earth. But when the sole purpose of their relationship being on screen was to tell the audience that bluepulse wasn’t happening, choosing a lesbian character to play the cis straight girlfriend is a bit of a slap in the face. again.

5. Bart Allen and Eduardo

Queerbaiting, nuff said.

For those not in the know, Ed is a character introduced as a runaway in Season 2, but he doesn’t really interact with Bart until mid-season 3. There is an episode where a group of heroes go to a carnival, and Ed and Bart appear to be on a date. They are in a group with all couples, except for Virgil. Virgil laments being the only person there without a significant other, implying that Bart and Ed are together. Additionally, Bart and Ed do everything that the other couples do together. It was pretty heavy-handed that the couples were there on dates.

And fans liked this! Even if Bluepulse wasn’t happening, Bart may still be bisexual or gay. This was made worse by Greg retweeting and liking Ed/Bart content, and not giving a straight answer on whether they were dating.

Which obviously, creates the expectation among LGBTQA+ fans that they will get together. They don’t. And later at a convention, one of the main writers (not Greg) said something like “its funny how the fans see relationships between characters differently from our intent” when asked a question about them. Essentially confirming that yeah, they didn’t have any actual content for them planned anyway. Though they did have an addendum that they may build on the fan reception/view of the relationship in the future (basically saying, maybe they’ll be canon).

As much as I’d like to be optimistic that they actually will get together and we’ll get a LGBTQ relationship that is in the spotlight for once, I’m not. I’ll be happy to be proved wrong on this point.

And that was my TEDtalk about how tone-deaf DC patting themselves on the back for LGBTQA+ content in Young Justice is. Especially when other animated shows do so much better with fewer episodes and screen time.

[elliotjgdb427]

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[jcmorrigan]

A while ago, I promised a Tales of Berseria headcanon dump, and this is all incredibly specific and based on my own reading, and I know no one else is going to agree with these exact interps or even the ships that built their foundation, but hey, here I go anyway

SEXUALITY/ROMANTIC ORIENTATION

Velvet Crowe: Lesbian. I first got an inkling she liked women in the prologue, when she was teasing around with Niko about “If you were a boy, I’d be in love.” True, she said it was a good thing neither was a boy at the time, but given how much the citizens of Aball drill ideas about marriage into Velvet’s head, it seems like a very heteronormative society and not that progressive. It’s a rural village in the middle of nowhere; what do you expect? Later on, Velvet would grieve heavily for Niko, in a way that I feel is reminiscent of a lover, and when it comes to Eleanor, she participates in “Women are mysterious creatures” rhetoric about her - the kind men usually say about women. Also has a fair share of soul-bonding moments with Magilou. I personally find more ship chemistry for her with any number of the women in ToB than any of the men.

Magilou: Bisexual. Seems to have an interest in Velvet. One particular victory screen has her joking with Phi about how if you can’t touch Velvet’s sword, everything else on her is fair game to touch. That’s wlw at least. However, her relationship with Bienfu of all things is where I get the impression she’s attracted to men - her talk of “punishing” him physically during nights at the inn read a little like innuendo to me. (Yeah, I just implied she has a sexual past with the Normin.) She also welcomes attention from all genders in general as to how amazing she is.

Eleanor Hume: WLW asexual. I don’t really have definitive subtext to point me toward ace, but I recall my own experience thinking I was morally upstanding because I wasn’t sexually active when my teenage peers were, and Eleanor, given her devotion to the Abbey and her pride in meeting its standards, just seems like she could have the same story: thinking she’s morally upstanding because she doesn’t act on any sexual urges, only to realize that’s because she doesn’t have them the way her teammates do. I already mentioned the subtext tension between Eleanor and Velvet - Velvet is the only person I can really pick out potential romantic chemistry for Eleanor with. Because of that, I’m not certain if she could also be attracted to men or not, as I don’t have any good samples.

Rokurou Rangetsu: MLM. I went back and forth between gay and bisexual for a while. For one, Rokurou has that scene when he talks about how women can break your heart worse than any danger in the field (and Eizen agrees), implying he’s had a past dating women. He also at least feigns interest in knowing about Velvet in the hot-spring bath. But this is underscored by a punchline of just wanting to make Phi sweat. Rokurou’s archetype of the heavy-drinking, optimistic idiot often comes paired with “womanizer,” but that wasn’t present here. And there was also the scene where he commented on how Velvet’s ragged outfit must be cold in Figahl only for her to scold him on ogling her - which I suppose can be read as him discreetly ogling her, but I see it more as him looking at Velvet in skimpy clothing and having the go-to reaction of how practical it must be in the weather. His chemistry with Eizen drips romantic to me, given how they share drinks and argue for fun.

Eizen: MLM. Same case as Rokurou - mentioned having his heart broken by women, and joined in on the Velvet-in-the-hot-spring discussion, but also expresses lots of affection toward Rokurou that was likely written to be platonic but comes across as very close. I’ve also seen the popularity of the Eizen/Zaveid ship, and given that Eizen told Zaveid his true name, which “can be seen as a confession of love,” there’s definitely subtext for that as well. So, again, whether gay or bi (or pan), I am not certain yet.

Laphicet: Bisexual. Obviously is attracted to the illusion of Edna and, to an extent, Velvet in the inn scene in Meirchio, but bonds with Videl intensely and devotes a major part of his life to making Videl’s dreams come true.

GENDER IDENTITY

Magilou: Transgender, identifies as very female. This was actually something I got an inkling on very early when some of her victory screens had her making jokes about her weapon in the way that some might view as phallic (I’m thinking especially of the one where Eleanor and Rokurou are talking about the benefits of short weapons, and Magilou says “Mine can be as long as I want!”). So I was of the mind that Magilou perhaps did possess a dick, and that actually got weirdly reinforced when she lifted her book-skirt to fluster Phi and he said “I wasn’t expecting that” - the joke is he was more interested in the books, but in the subtext, I’m reading that despite him definitely knowing what a cis woman’s nether regions would look like (Eleanor is his vessel), he didn’t expect something about Magilou’s lower half. So I was thinking either pre-op transgender or intersex (I’m not certain what types of gender reassignment surgery or artes would be available in Desolation). When all of a sudden, her backstory was revealed that as Legate Magillanica, she had a whole identity and a name that she erased (going so far as to say “Magillanica” is dead), as well as a background growing up in a conservative/religious household with Melchior, and, before that, being passed around to guardians who didn’t love her, leading to her feeling emotionally repressed. And all of a sudden it all fell into place: her story really parallels transitioning. So now I love to just complete the analogy. We know she was going by she/her pronouns at a young age in her traveling show, but we also know that she was exhibited at a “freak show” due to her high resonance. It’s possible she was also advertised as (insert a horrible slur about androgyny here). If she was already well-known going by she/her, Melchior would probably have wanted to keep that intact so as not to cause a stink in the Abbey. But, Melchior being the horrible person he is, he probably also thought Magilou was fit to stand as a legate where no other woman was because she was “male” to him. Anyway, by now, at least the other women on her team have seen her naked and have nothing negative to say on the subject - the party knows and they love her.

Laphicet: I actually see him as a little genderfluid based on a couple of throwaway things. For one, when the party discovers the “unicorn horn” (narwhal tusk), there’s a big discussion about how only a “maiden” pure of heart should be able to pick it up. Velvet offhandedly says Phi should pick it up anyway because it’s his quest. In the end, the myth was dismissed, but I rather like the thought that Phi sometimes identifies more female and therefore could fill the bill of being a maiden pure of heart. His/her personality also influences Innominat, whose outfit of choice is androgynous as far as gender-specific fashion conventions go (and also really spiffy). Most days, Phi is male, but some days, not as much. With his status at game’s end, it also feels a little more fitting to say that such a guardian of the world should be less adhered to one side of the binary.

NEURODIVERGENCE

Eleanor Hume: OCD and anxiety. It’s outright mentioned how she takes responsibility and guilt for everything, even things that have nothing to do with her and aren’t her fault - a telltale marker of OCD. She’s also introduced as being emotional and teased for being a “crybaby,” showing that ordinary situations can easily push her over the edge. I’m only talking main party, else Kamoana would be her own entry, but Kamoana canonically has panic attacks that manifest as fevers according to Mahina’s note, and can be “cured” with placebos. Eleanor’s arc is linked to Kamoana throughout, and the moment where this is revealed is one in which Eleanor is outlining her similarities to Kamoana and how that should mean Kamoana would resent her. I feel like this draws a pretty blatant parallel between Kamoana’s rampant anxiety and Eleanor’s, and how Eleanor jumped to the worst-case scenario only to be shown that the child she worries about has something very big in common with her that might actually be a bridge between them rather than a wall.

Eizen: Autistic. Infodumping is a major character trait of his, and there’s an entire skit dedicated to talking about how “picky” he is about his routine, needing to wear his clothing in specific ways and dock at the same place every time in Port Zekson.

[sapphos-darlings]

I’m proud of my mother. She was born in the 50s into a conservative family, if you can consider them conservative in rural Finland in the 50s - the father brought in the food, the mother stayed home tending to a flood of kids never having the energy for all of them, leaving them often on their own to look after each other, hoping they’d all make it through the day but in the end, no one had the time to make sure. They were hunters and farmers, traditionally Christian as far as I can tell. The community they lived in had a lesbian couple that everyone knew about but nobody talked about; it was taboo and shameful. Being gay wasn’t right. My mum’s straight, too, so this was easy for her to internalize.

She became a mother late at at 37. I’m her only child. First, I was gnc. She wanted a daughter she could dress up pretty and pamper. I wanted nothing to do with dresses and my favourite way to pass the time was to climb trees and roll around in mud. My mum gave up on the dresses very fast. I played with wooden swords and bows that my dad and my neighbours built me. The neighbours told my parents I’d grow up to be a vegan feminist activist, in words that made sense for the time. Everyone knew I was strange.

My dad was mostly drunk and away from home, so my mum raised me much on her own. She never implied in any manner that what I was doing was wrong or improper or that I wasn’t good as I was. I had sleepovers with girls and boys all the way until early teenage, at which point we separated naturally. She once told me she was afraid what’d happen when I’d first have “boy troubles”. I never had boy troubles. She wasn’t prepared for the troubles I was going to have, though.

At 10 years old, we went to a concert together. I fell in love with the singer of the band and spent my next two years fawning over him. I think at this stage, everything was going as intended. I don’t think she even remembers this phase now, because last year, she asked me in all honesty if I’m a lesbian.

I’m not a lesbian, but you might not know that.

I was scared that I was when I turned 12 and found myself attracted to Avril Lavigne’s promo picture in a CD store. I got over my freakout in about ten minutes, but my attraction to women (not Lavigne) survived. At 14, I was involved in a weird relationship with a girl my age. I don’t remember much of it other than that I was very bad at playing relationship, and I feel guilty she left her girlfriend for that mess. At 15, I fell in love for the first time with a girl I’d love for the next decade, desperately, painfully. Between there somewhere, maybe at 13, my mum found me crying in a closet because my best friend had a crush on me and I was scared to tell her I didn’t want to be in a relationship with her. My mum stumbled over the word “boy” when she asked what “he” wanted of me. I know she knew then, but we never voiced it.

I met a crossdressing gay guy around that time. He went by the name Cherry and wore cybergoth outfits and makeup, and he turned 18 a couple weeks after I met him. My mum let me go to his birthday party and stay until 1am, and later go visit him in the capital on my own over multiple occasions, once personally meeting him and giving him a hug. He was wearing platform boots and hair extensions and probably fishnets on some part of his body. She loved him because he was like a big brother to me, and never questioned the way he presented himself or worried about him being a bad influence to me, because he made me happy and I felt safe and excited to be with him. I also had a major crush on him which I think everyone was well aware of, but it was a safe crush, because I was 13 and he was 18 and like a big brother to me, and I was a girl and he was gay and everyone knew that, too.

When I was 16 and we went on a vacation in Europe, I spent all of my time finding the means to talk to the girl I loved at all times. I racked up an insane phone bill and couldn’t care less about the Pride parade in Rome, because I would rather lock myself up in an overheated Internet shack that was no wider than our bathroom at home to talk to her for hours online. Then she met another girl and chose her to be her girlfriend, only to tell me years later she hadn’t chosen me because she was too afraid of losing me, which made no sense to me. I felt like my world had ended. I didn’t stop crying for weeks and I signed myself up in a hospital because I was afraid I’d kill myself over the heartbreak.

I think it was around that time I started going to Pride, too, but regularly only when I met my next girlfriend around 18. I was always scared to go to Pride, not because I was afraid of showing I was LGBT but because I was scared of being the target of an attack like a bombing or a shooting. One year, we were the target of a gas attack, but I didn’t even know that, because I was marching at a different section of the parade and only heard about it later in the news. I don’t know if my mum was aware we were dating then with this girl, but I think she did. I think at this stage she’d already settled on me being a lesbian, it was just unspoken between us. She’d once asked me, because I wrote fanfiction most of my teenage and I always showed it off to her because I was proud of what I was writing and it never occurred to me it might have been inappropriate or offensive that I was writing about gay relationships. She vehemently denied this for years, because according to her, she’d never spoken the word “lesbian” in her life, much less referring to me.

She did speak it, last year, though. I do believe she spoke it when I was a child, too, when she asked me if I was a lesbian. I know she did. I said I wasn’t, because I’m not, but I understand that the evidence stacked up against me. Obsession with same-sex media, Pride parades, girlfriends, girl crushes, heartbreaks over girls, never once a mention of a real boyfriend or any material boy crush aside from those I had to a few chosen celebrities, fictional characters and idols, all of whom were unattainable and never as strong and overwhelming as the love I so obviously felt for women - I don’t blame her for thinking I was a lesbian. I’m not sure if “bisexual” entered her vocabulary at any time before last year.

At 19, I came out to her as transgender. She said she didn’t understand but that she’d try her best and support me no matter what as long as I would be happy, and what I was doing was making me happier, as I was obviously unhappy and struggled with difficult mental health issues for most of my life. She accompanied me to my meetings at the gender clinic and spoke with my doctors and nurses to understand. She tried her best to remember my pronouns when speaking in English, and even though she failed and has always failed, she did learn to call me by my new name without a fault. She’s never regarded me as a man of any sort and that’s alright, because I had and have her support no matter what. So here we were for the main part of my 20s - she thought I was a lesbian and knew I’m transsexual.

It’s only these past two years we’ve really talked about any of this. That’s the size of the taboo she was raised with in terms of the LGBT matters. She might have asked me once if I was a lesbian before, but even to herself, she’s denied ever voicing that word. Last year, or a bit over, when I was 27 or 28, she finally did consciously voice the question over the phone: am I a lesbian?

No. But that was the first time I ever vocally came out as a bisexual. I’ve never hidden it, but I’ve never come out either. I’ve always just either “been” or left it unspoken. All my friends have always known, and all of the Internet has always known, and I’ve never kept it a secret, but within the family, it’s been unspoken.

She was alright with that. We talked about my transition a little bit, if I was happy with it, if it made me happier, or if I regretted it. (It made me happier, I’m happy with it. She was relieved to hear that.) Other than that, we’ve never spoken of it, but all of this is why I respect my mum more than I probably have ever respected anybody else.

I’m everything she was taught to think of shameful and bad her whole life, everything she struggled to accept as a part of “normal”, as something natural. I’m exclusively female-oriented bisexual, gender non-conforming, and a diagnosed and transitioned transsexual. She couldn’t possibly have a child deeper in the LGBT than I am. And not once in my life did she make me feel like I wasn’t good as I am, like I wasn’t allowed to be myself and express who I am and look up to the people I did. She always made sure I’d be safe to her best ability, but her concern never restricted my freedom to be myself and explore my identity, and her concern was never made to be my problem, or something I had to take responsibility of.

And this year, because the pandemic had moved the Pride parade by a few months and because that meant that my best friend (that girl I dated when I was 18) probably couldn’t join me because of her career situation, I asked mum if she’d come with me to Pride, because I don’t want to go alone. I fully expected this to be the last thing she couldn’t do. Earlier, she’d asked me to come to a gay movie with her because she really wanted to see it but couldn’t make herself go alone. That had been a throughoutly difficult experience for her - yes, she’d enjoyed the movie, but it had made her feel very conflicted because of the values she’d been raised with and the prejudices she was trying to fight. A Pride parade just seemed way beyond there - I just needed to ask because yes, I did need someone to go with, but also because I wanted to show her that I wanted to take her, and that she’s welcome to be a part of my life even in the ways that we’ve always been afraid to discuss. I’m happy to share my identity with her openly, because she’s been accepting and understanding of it and never given me a reason to feel like I can’t be honest with her. It was more symbolic than anything. And like I expected, she did hesitate, but what I didn’t expect was that she’d tell me “yes”.

I’ve never been more proud of her than at that moment. I know how much it means to her to say “yes, I will come with you to Pride”. She had to reassure herself that for her, it doesn’t mean anything else than that she’s proud of me, and supports who I am and my right and the right of everyone like me to be who we are. I reassured her about it too - Pride is full of straight allies. Pride is full of parents, partners and children, even dogs and horses of people who are LGBT. She’s not making a statement about herself by being there. She doesn’t need to come out as gay to join Pride with me. She can just be there for me.

But it means the world to me that she agreed.

I’ve quite literally never been the girl she wanted me to be, and my friends were never the friends she imagined her child having when she was planning for me. But she’s never, in any manner, implied or let me think that she didn’t love me. She’s never made me feel like I wasn’t right for being who I am. She never let her doubts or questions or concerns or prejudices keep me from living my life and pursuing happiness as it came to me. Not once.

And for that, I’m proud of her. I couldn’t have a better mother.

[shamelesslyaddict]

People ask me all the time "why are you so invested in a fictional story? The people arent real, how can you let it make you so emotional?"

Heres why:

When I was a young bisexual, a baby gay if you will, I stumbled upon a show called The New Normal. It followed a gay couple and their quest to become parents. It was the first show I'd ever seen that portrayed gay characters, and while I know there are other shows that did this, this one was special to me because it was my very first. The New Normal didnt make it past its first season because the ratings were crap. Why were the ratings crap? Because the main characters were gay. Then of course, there was Partners and other shows cancelled for the same reason.

I had given up on finding shows with gay main characters (not just side characters for diversity) because I was sure that those shows would get canceled or the characters would get cut. When I started watching Shameless, it wasnt because of their depictions of LGBTQ characters, it was because my boyfriend and I were bored and we needed a new show to binge. I didnt realize that this would change my life and how I view LGBTQ people in media.

The thing about shameless is that they didnt write just one bland gay character. It seemed to me that shows that did depict gay characters depicted one type: rich, flamboyant, in your face gays. Shameless didn't do that.

Shameless wrote a poor, closeted gay teenager, with military dreams, who was having an affair with an older married man. In later seasons, he was a poor, mentally ill gay character. And that meant a lot to me! I have anxiety and depression, and while my depressive episodes are nothing like those of a bipolar person, I still know what its like to be unable to get out of bed.

Shameless wrote an abused, violent, street thug, heavily closeted, self hating, teenaged gay character. And that meant a lot to me too! I wasnt abused; but the portrayal of a different type of gay character instead of the usual snotty rich trope, was eye opening to me as a young gay.

Shameless wrote a "straight" married store owner gay character because life is complicated and things like that happen.

Shameless wrote countless lesbian characters!

Shameless wrote a black bisexual character!

Shameless wrote a transgender character!

And while I didnt like either of these characters personally, it wasnt because of their sexuality, Orientation, or gender. It was because each and every one of Shameless' LGBTQ characters had MORE to their story than just "being gay" or "being trans". Imagine having the ability to dislike an LGBTQ character for more reasons than their preferences/gender identity simply because they were WRITTEN with more traits than just those things. Having the freedom to not enjoy characters out of guilt because they're the only options available was MIND BLOWING.

Ian Gallagher and Mickey Milkovich, among the rest of Shameless' LGBTQ characters, changed my life, because for ONCE I got to see portrayals of characters that had more complexity to them than just their sexuality. Shameless didnt get canceled just because a few characters were gay. Because Shameless added them realistically to the story told in the show, a story about a poor family on the Southside of Chicago. It changed my outlook honestly. A show that wasnt canceled over gay characters. It wasnt canceled period. Wow.

Not to mention, the life Noel and Cameron brought to Ian and Mickey respectively made it all the more enjoyable. In interviews they never talked about the characters in a way that made them different from any other characters they portray. They normalized being straight and playing LGBTQ characters.

Shameless isnt perfect. It never will be. And as a gallavich fan, I dont think Ian and Mickey get nearly enough screentime. I dont think they ever will get enough screentime. But I'm grateful for Shameless, because even though they're not doing enough for their LGBTQ characters right now, for baby gay me, this is more than enough. And I am content. I am content for all of those shows, The New Normal, Partners, all of them.

So when people ask me "how can you be so invested in a fictional love story?" The answer is simple.

Because to me, it's not fictional.

(Not to mention I just love gallavich)

[santiagonex]

LGBT+ TV Shows Rec List

hi ladies lemme list a bunch of LGBT–heavy tv shows... I’ll only list what I can vouche for so most of it is obviously mlm... some shows may have only like two gays but the majority of the story revolves about being gay and that’s why I’m gonna include something like that whereas on the other hand there are shows like Riverdale with 20 gays but they give them 0 attention so we’re not gonna list these kind of uglies so... enjoy (titles with * are my ultimate favs)

Ackley Bridge* – new school merges the lives & cultures of the divided white and Asian community... iconic show, main lesbian and many other surprises... the whole story is worth it

American Horror Story – many main gays throughout the different seasons... many spicy scenes

Black Sails – main gay pirates if you’re into that

Champions – young gay guy meeting his father and then living with him... very funny and endearing show by Mindy Kaling

Class – Dr. Who spin-off, main gays, center of the show practically, other storylines are amazing as well

Cucumber, Banana – two respective british sister shows about gays... I’ve only seen some sneak peaks but definitely gay

Dante's Cove – trash but with spicy gay scenes

Don't Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves – mini 3-episodic show... never saw but it’s gay

Élite* – the queerest show that was practically branded as usual het show but we were ALL wrong... this one is just 10/10

Eyewitness – american one, norwegian one or french one, doesn’t matter, it’s about the same thing – thriller/crime show with the focus being on the gay couple with spicy scenes

Faking It* – problematic to many people but I just found this show relaxing... many letters from LGBT+ included... funny

Glee* – even during straight times it was pretty gay... but I mean who at this point doesn’t know about Glee

How to Get Away with Murder – iconic show, if not for the gays then watch it for the plot definitely

In The Flesh* – gay zombies... honestly this one takes the cake because who doesn’t want gay zombies and amazing storylines

Insatiable – trash... but with gay twist

Killing Eve* – I don’t even know I just find this show very mesmerizing it’s something different and it’s definitely worth to watch

Legends of Tomorrow – wasn’t sure whether to include this but out of all CW shows this is the one with most main gays and I mean... we need to support that... gays (and hets) travelling through time

Looking* – show with only main gay guys situated in San Francisco... this one is just... a masterpiece

Man in an Orange Shirt* – 2-episodic show, amazing story and casting, 2 parallel stories – one about guy in the past... the second one in the present about his grandson... both of them gay... yeah.. also Wren from Pretty Little Liars phew!

Merlí – doesn’t revolve around gays ONLY but at the same time... it kind of does and it’s pretty progressive and the main mlm pairing just got a spin-off show so yeah

Modern Family – never saw but my straight friends are loving this... mlm having a kid... supposedly funny so I mean... yeah

Noah’s Arc – gay classic I’m currently catching up on... it just got oficially released on YouTube for free so yeah... go ahead and get educated

Now Apocalypse – crackt show but with hot men and hot gay scenes... Scott from Teen Wolf, Beck from Victorious, Jake from Glee, Matty from Awkward... I mean

Nr. 47 – just like SKAM, each season is focused on a character... there’s a gay season and it’s nice to see if you’re in for a chill story

One Day at a Time* – honestly the funniest and the most heart-warming sitcom I’ve ever seen... has a main lesbian and the whole story is just... wow... 10/10

Orange is the New Black – saw like two seasons but obviously many many many prison lesbians

Partners – from the creators of WIll & Grace, sitcom, gay and straigh besties, both have their partners, cute

Please Like Me – australian show that is revolved around a gay guy... funny

Pose* – transgender rights! honestly very visually-pleasing heart-warming tear-jerking iconic show... worth to watch DEFINITELY 10/10

Queer as Folk – casual gays... show is about them and them only... plus a wlw couple

Schitt's Creek* – FUNNY show with Eugene Levy and his son in it... honestly worth watching for the story... but the son is pansexual and it’s just so good you NEED to see it

sense8* – gay lesbian transgender pansexual bisexual it has it all... from the creators of The Matrix so you would have to live under the rock not to hear about this... amazingly queer show

Sex Education* – main gay character not being treated just like the sidekick but actually like an equal to his best straight friend... very inclusive show

Shameless – honestly I don’t even know why I’m including this because this one is really on THIN line but it just had so many gay storylines and the amazing Mickey/Ian love story in the first seasons... I’d feel bad not to include it... but yeah, pretty trashy, not even watching now

SKAM – if the version (original, french, italian, german, spanish, dutch, american... did I forget anything) has a gay season then the gay season is DEFINITELY worth watching because the gays are getting the treatment they DESERVE

South of Nowhere – apparently has wlw but it’s trashy BUT it is vouched for by my lesbian friend so yeah...

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story – if you’re bored of casual gay themes and you’re in for something else... the title of this is already telling

The Fosters* – lesbian moms adopting children... wlw, mlm, trans man, trans guy being in romantic relationship with the main gal, social justice, lgbt talks, lesbian wedding... sometimes it’s insufferable but at the same time it just has it all is all, definitely worth watching

The House of Flowers* – comedy GOLD, 10/10.. already renewed for two more seasons it’s THAT powerful

The L Word – never saw but I mean... lesbians

The Magicians – saw only one season but from what I’ve seen and heard... it’s not everyday that the main hero gets to be bi... so like... sci-fi gays and all of that

The New Normal – cute lil funny show about gay couple who wants to have a child

The Other Two* – the FUNNIEST 2019 show about gay guy, his sister and his brother who went viral... the MESSIEST but most RELATABLE gay character we’ve EVER seen

The Real O'Neals – relaxing show focused on the gay guy and his christian family... funny and definitely worth checking out

This Close – show about two main deaf characters – guy and a girl... the guy is gay and the scenes are spicy

Torchwood – haven’t seen yet but... fom what I’ve been told and from what I’ve seen... very VERY gay show

Transparent – are you ready... 3 2 1... trans parent

When We Rise – never saw but it’s mini-show about the history of LGBT rights advocacy in the United States... if it’s up your valley go for it

Will & Grace – if you don’t know what’s this then I have no idea how you even came all the way down here... sitcom, classic, gay... yeah

[shalebridge-cradle]

Bisclavret Round-Up

Unholy took about three months to write. Fairy Tale took five. Hindsight took six.

Bisclavret took nineteen, and that should be the biggest indicator to you that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

This was my first venture into another fandom, and out of my comfort zone (though not entirely – supernatural elements for life). I’m not sure whether or not I did the source material and its characters justice, however, especially with the supernatural element I went with (Wolves are believed to have gone extinct in England in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century), but I will try to explain my reasoning behind some of my decisions here.

The Characters

My main concern.

We get a good view of Monty’s thought process throughout the show, through the framing device of writing his memoirs and views of his private affairs. Phoebe and Sibella, on the other hand, are characters we don’t get much of in the way of examination – we only see them through Monty’s eyes until the very end, where they reveal themselves as more than that.

Sibella is a bit self-centred, and extremely practical when it comes to how she sees her place in society, which implies some self-confidence issues. Phoebe is more idealistic, and independent, but still hopes for a match fit for a storybook. But, towards the end, Sibella demonstrates she is more than a vain god-digger, afraid of losing the man she loves and willing to potentially compromise her image to save him, while Phoebe shows that she is not nearly as innocent or naive as the people around her consider her to be.

I interpreted the two women’s characterisations as thus; Sibella believes she is bound by society’s view of her. Phoebe does not. This, I believed, needed to be the focus.

Which is where we introduce…

The Whole Werewolf Thing

“[Post-modern Gothic] warns us to be suspicious of monster hunters, monster makers, and above all, discourses invested in purity and innocence. The monster always represents the disruption of categories, the destruction of boundaries, and the presence of impurities and so we need monsters and we need to recognize and celebrate our own monstrosities.”  - J Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters

I gave a number of possible causes of the D’Ysquith ‘family curse’, if it is one – the actions of the first countess, Gregory D’Ysquith burning down a monastery (divine punishment is a possible cause), but I never gave a specific answer. I think I might be operating on the logic of the original Bisclavret – it’s irrelevant.

The reason there isn’t is because I intended it as a metaphor – which I think I’ve made clear with my chapter updates here (though you don’t have to read it that way, Death of the Author and all that), but I never quite decided and what it was a metaphor for. In terms of this particular narrative, it can be read as a metaphor for feminism, and/or a metaphor for same-sex attraction.

Feminism

Edwardian Era England, where A Gentleman’s Guide takes place, is not overly-represented in fiction. Not surprising, considering it’s a pretty short time period between the surprisingly long Victorian era and the world-changing events of World War One. However, when you think of that time period, a certain group tends to come to mind – the suffragettes.

(Just a note. Agatha D’Ascoyne, the character from Kind Hearts and Coronets who inspired Hyacinth D’Ysquith in the musical, was a suffragette. She has no lines, apart from “Shush!” – Deeds, Not Words.)

We know what these people wanted – Votes for Women. They were not prepared to wait for society to change to get it, and when peaceful protest was ignored, they began to act out. They refused to fit into their role of quiet, demure, loyal wives, and for some groups, this was seen as threatening. Anti-suffragette cartoons of the time often depicted these women as old, ugly and/or selfish for wanting similar rights to men instead of accepting their place as a ‘lesser being’.

The point I am trying to make is, being in defiance of the role you are expected to play – which Sibella is afraid to show – was seen by many to be ugly. Beastly.

Phoebe runs Henry’s country estate for him. Phoebe flaunts societal expectations by proposing to Monty, instead of waiting for him to propose, the ‘proper’ way to do things. While she is feminine, she does not fit the idea of what a woman ‘should be’.

Sibella makes a point to meet her obligations as a wife, though she does surreptitiously carry on an affair. She sacrifices her own happiness to get what she wants in a socially acceptable way. She has no intention of leaving Lionel in the source material, but she convinces herself that a rich, good-looking, polite man – what society thinks of as the ideal male – is what she wants, and realises on her wedding day that it isn’t.

And goes through with it anyway.

When she can no longer fit that mould, when she refuses to go along with Lionel’s plan to leech off the countess, when she undermines and argues with her husband, that’s when things start happening. Indeed, her ‘beastly’ outbursts manifest as standing up for herself. She ends the story as a much happier and self-assured person than she was at the beginning, and attempts to bring justice to other women.

Same-Sex Attraction

This is a bit more straightforward. We’re coming right off the back of the Victorian era here, where Oscar Wilde and others like him got their lives ruined. Same-sex relationships aren’t viewed in a positive light at all at this time – you like the same gender? Off to prison with you, deviant!

As people that were (and often still are) villainised, misunderstood and attacked for the crime of existing, some members of the LGBT community reclaim monsters such as vampires, werewolves and the Babadook as their own as a means of subverting their image in a heteronormative society. Being ‘monstrous’ is not bad. Being different is fine. You may feel malformed and wrong, but you are not. You and your quirks are accepted.

For some, the ones to fear are those who appear in the daylight.

Sibella, for all her talk of being a monster, only fights back when threatened. Morton has a heart attack when put in the position of his victims, subverting the formula he’s used to. Lionel, fearing that Sibella will leave him and damage his image, resorts to violence against Sibella and several other women he sees as substitutes for her. Mary attempts to murder Sibella for getting in the way of a monogamous man-woman relationship. In her eyes, Sibella is an irredeemable villain, but Phoebe can be ‘fixed’.

If you want to look deeper into this link between horror and the LGBT community, here’s a video essay discussing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender representation in horror films.

There are only a few non-metaphorical references to werewolves. The wolf head in Eugenia’s dower house is a family member – as previously mentioned, wolves went extinct in England during the reign of Henry VII. St Hubert’s Key is a charm that more often than not looks like a nail, and was supposed to be able to rid the body of disease caused by a dog or wolf bite. There is some science behind this – the metal was heated before being pressed to the wound, and, if the subject was at risk of contracting rabies from the injury, the heat would likely sterilise and cauterise the potential infection site.

Not the First Murder-y Heir

There are a couple of characters named or directly taken from Israel Rank – Autobiography of a Criminal, the inspiration for Kind Hearts and Coronets and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. I’ve compared these works before, so I’ll just go over those that appear here.

Esther (Lane) – The third object of Israel Rank’s affections, and a governess. Knows more than she’s letting on in Israel Rank, and in this story as well.

James “Jim” Morton – Appears for about a page to explain Israel’s disillusionment with the ideal male – while Morton seems great to some, he really isn’t. Since Jim only appears as a child in the book, his characterisation here is drastically different.

Lord and Lady Pebworth – Almost directly lifted from the book, with Lady Pebworth being a bad singer and Lord Pebworth an older gentleman who lets his wife get away with a lot. The difference here is that Israel introduces the Hollands to the Pebworths, while the Pebworths are hoping the Hollands introduce them to Lord and Lady Navarro.

Sir Anthony Cross – Quiet, very well-off, slightly older gentleman who is quite taken by Sibella, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Acquaintance of the Pebworths. Pretty much the same guy.

Ethel D’Ysquith (Gascoyne) – An ancestor Israel is quite taken with, not only due to the resemblance between the two. He’s made the 3rd Earl of Highhurst because I didn’t feel like making an imaginary preceding title (Monty is only the 9th Earl, while the 10th Earl Gascoyne is about five generations before Israel – Ethel was the 6th Earl) and the 2nd Earl, Roland, had already been named in the musical. Phoebe’s description of him is meant to heavily imply he was also a werewolf. If I had read the book before fleshing out the D’Ysquith family tree, he would have taken the role that the first countess plays in the narrative’s events (Ethel Gascoyne hid in a tower with an Italian magician for 20 years).

Kate Falconer – The character who would later be known as ‘Boat Girl’ in Kind Hearts and Coronets and Evangeline Barley in A Gentleman’s Guide. Her great crime is to go on holiday with her boyfriend, and gets poisoned for her troubles. She survives here, and I used her to try a formatting technique (while she speaks, none of her dialogue is in quotes: in a way, she is voiceless).

(Sir) Cheveley Drummond, (Lady) Enid Branksome, and Catherine Goodsall – only mentioned briefly. Drummond is described as handsome and ‘interesting’ by Israel, Lady Enid is a young woman from a penniless but aristocratic family, and Catherine Goodsall in an actress whose abusive husband was beaten so badly by a Gascoyne he joined the navy and never came back to land.

In addition, Lionel’s later characterisation comes directly from Kind Hearts and Coronets, since he gets  almost none in the musical. His breakdown in Chapter 11 follows his emotional journey when asking for a loan – affability, begging, threatening suicide, insults and physical violence.

Literary References:

Not always relevant, but there is a wide enough variety that I’m collecting them.

Every chapter title, and the tagline of the work, comes from Manners and Social Usages by Mary Elizabeth (Mrs. John) Sherwood. It’s a bit out of date by the time of this story (written in 1884), but Sherwood does have some great phrases in her etiquette handbook.

Ruddigore is mentioned in chapter 2, only because it is a musical theatre production (opera) where ancestors play a role and family expectations are subverted.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Hamlet. It’s Hamlet.

When in the chronicle of wasted time, I see descriptions of the fairest wights, and beauty making beautiful old rhyme in praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights...  Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Number 106.

I desire, and I crave… Fragment from Sappho’s poetry.

The countess closes her book; something by a George Reynolds. George W. M. Reynolds wrote Wagner the Wher-Wolf (with that spelling) in 1857.

I met a lady in the meads, full beautiful, a faery’s child: Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild. La Belle Dame sans Merci (The beautiful lady without mercy) by John Keats.

Sibella also briefly mentions Algernon Blackwood, a supernatural fiction writer who wrote a short story about a werewolf (portrayed quite differently here) that a character in 1909 could have possibly read (the story was first published in 1908).

In addition, the whole story is named after a very early depiction of a sympathetic werewolf, Bisclavret by Marie de France (and the most direct I think I’ve ever been with a title). It depicts, naturally, a werewolf (who is also a knight, because not being human doesn’t disqualify you from doing that – cutting social commentary for the 12th century) who is trapped in his wolf form after being tricked by his wife and her lover. Through chivalric behaviour to the king on a hunt, he works himself back into the royal court and, when his former wife pays a visit, bites off her nose. The king thinks the sudden aggressive behaviour from his pet prompts further investigation, the wife reveals all, and the knight is restored to human form. Also, all of the wife’s children are born without noses from then on. Lionel getting his nose bitten off is a reference to this poem.

Uncategorised Trivia

This work was written with the UK spellings of certain words, because it takes place in England. Previous works all took place in the US, and so used US spelling.

Les Patineurs Valse is French for The Skater’s Waltz. Reference to Asquith Jr. and Evangeline Barley.

All of the racehorse names Sibella finds are either variations, anagrams or synonyms of actual racehorses in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Sir Hugh is Sir Huon, Gil Owen is Neil Gow, Irish Lass is Irish Lad, Supervision is Oversight and Pinnacle is Meridian.

Lionel was right to be concerned about Phoebe’s flower arrangement. Red begonias represent love, lavender-coloured heathers represent admiration and loneliness (and are a reference to another fandom I write for), tuberoses are symbolic of wild or forbidden passion (and was commonly used as a funeral flower), and verbena is reference to romance and sweet memories. The dead foliage is meant to mean sadness. Overall, the intended meaning is I miss you, my love.

[gottawriteanegoortwo]

Darkstache Day Six: Pride

A continuation of ‘Past and Present’. It would be recommended to read that first, but it’s not necessary.

Dark might be a being who is of an unknown age, but he still seems a little unnerved about their relationship. Wilford takes advantage of Pride taking place in the city to show him how things have changed.

Word Count: 1,532

-

“C’moooon, Dark! It’s a lovely day out! We can’t spend it in heere!”

“I’m not going outside. I can’t, Will.”

A familiar argument the pair have had ever since Dark admitted he was a little uneasy about their relationship as a couple. Wilford would insist that going out on a date would normalise things, but Dark seemed overly aware of people staring at them and what their reactions might be. However, Wilford was set on this task.

“C’mon. Just a walk. Nothin’ overly extravagant. We can go get ice-cream, have a little wander in th’ park, then walk home. We’ll be gone barely two hours. Deal?” He needed to get Dark into the city. The Pride festivities were taking place today, like some sort of miracle that might help Dark see that being in a same-sex relationship wasn’t the end of the world. Of course, he didn’t dare tell Dark this. He instead waited for Dark to give a response. The entity’s stern gaze was focused on Wilford, before it soon dropped into a sigh.

“... Fine. Let me get my coat.”

By the time the pair were leaving, Wilford was holding a small rucksack filled with various Pride accessories just in case this worked, but covered them with a large bottle of water and a plain scarf. They chatted casually as they strolled into the heart of the city. Dark had noticed the large amount of young people hanging around, but said nothing. It was only when they passed a rainbow flag did he speak up. He held back to look at it. The breeze had picked up enough to let the flag fly with gusto.

“That’s the fourth one of those I’ve seen on our way here.” Wilford, who had only noticed the absence when Dark spoke up, turned on his heel to go back.

“Pretty sure it’s a summer thing,” he lied. “Y’know, because ya see more rainbows when th’ weather’s nice?” It was a flimsy story, but it seemed to work, and Dark continued on the path with a comment about how it would be more fitting in winter when there was a distinct lack of colour.

There was a crowd at the ice cream parlour, and Wilford was afraid it would be enough to deter Dark. Yet, by some miracle, the bribe of chocolate ice cream was enough to keep Dark there. In fact, as they walked to the park, Wilford couldn’t help but notice how content Dark was. This might be the best time for Dark to experience Pride - before the chaos truly set in.

One of the main walkways in the park had been taken over for the day. There were stalls on both sides - snacks, handmade crafts, face paint, among other things - went as far as the eye could see. Wondering if it was a summer fair, Dark approached one of the artist’s stalls to admire their work. The artist noticed the couple, as well as the lack of accessories, and was about to open her mouth to say something. As though sensing this, Wilford whipped out a folded up piece of paper out of his pocket and, without Dark seeing, flashed it to her and tilted his head in Dark’s direction. It had one simple word: “Closeted”. Her eyes widened and she nodded in understanding.

“Hey, you know… You look like you need a little colour today,” she piped up with a smile. “I’ve been giving these out for free to people who’ve dropped by.” Before Dark could question her, a set of rainbow beads were put around his head. “There’s gonna be a lot going on today, but I hope you have a nice time. Remember to take lots of photos!” A matching set was given to Wilford, and the pair set off. Once they were far enough away, Dark turned to Wilford with a look of suspicion.

“You know more than you’re letting on. What is actually going on? There’s something you’re…” He trailed off. Two men walked out of a nearby coffee stand. They had a cup in one hand and their free hands were linked together. One man - who had a rainbow flag painted on his cheek - leaned over and quickly kissed the other on the lips before they carried on. Dark watched the exchange with a thousand thoughts running through his mind. There was no fuss about the action. No drama. No fear of being scorned. He glanced to the side and made his way to a bench where he could just observe. Wilford followed silently.

The longer the pair stayed there, the more Dark saw. People of the same sex acting as normal couples. Individuals who appeared to be dressed as the opposite gender (Wilford had leaned over and whispered something about ‘drag queens’). People who were prancing around like flamboyant peacocks. People who were shy and withdrawn, but with supportive friends. They all had various coloured combinations, but nearly all of them had that rainbow flag on their person.

“... Those flags have nothing to do with summer, do they?”

“Nope.”

“So what do they mean?”

Wilford turned his head to look at the entity. It was like the day that had started him on this quest to help Dark understand that this side of him was okay. He couldn’t back down now.

“This is a Pride festival. It’s a day where folks of th’ LGBT Community - er, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, an’ many others that I’ll explain later - come out an’ celebrate who they are. Was originally a bunch of protests, an’ many use it ta look fer equal rights. Days like these have helped raise awareness, an’ this whole month has been Pride Month.” The rucksack was slipped off his shoulders so Wilford could pull out two pins. They were enamel flags. He pointed to the one with pink, yellow, and blue bands on it.

“This one here is th’ Pansexual flag. That’s what I am. It means that I am attracted ta people regardless of their gender or any other factors.” Next, the second pin, with a rainbow flag. “An’ this is th’ Gay flag. It’s th’ symbol of Pride itself, but it’s also fer men who are attracted to those of th’ same gender… As I believe you are.” This was a sensitive topic, and Wilford was very careful to gauge Dark’s reaction. That reminder from Doc on making sure he didn’t “cross a line” was certainly working wonders. “I-I know this is a lot fer ya. I know ya probably hate me fer lyin’ but… I wanted ya ta see this. Sure, things ain’t perfect, an’ we gotta long way ta go before it’s all equal, but yer not alone. We can head back if ya don’t wanna stay, an’ I can promise not ta bring it up again. Just know… It’s yer choice.”

Dark’s eyes fell to the two pins in Wilford’s hand. There was so much to take in right now. All the fear and strain and isolation from nearly a century ago bubbled in the back of his mind like some kettle left too long on the stove. He wanted to rise up, scold Wilford for not taking his experiences into account and that he ought to know better… But how could he? Wilford was doing what he thought was best, and in as mindful a way as possible. They were two in a small crowd. No one was staring. No one was judging. That young lady had given him a set of rainbow beads for no reason other than he went to examine her wares.

He lifted one pin - the Pansexual one - and reached over to gently attach it to Wilford’s suspenders. It suited him (of course it did). His hand then dropped to Wilford’s and slowly curled it up. Whatever fears Wilford had faded when Dark flashed a smile overrun with nerves.

“Could you put it on me?”

-

They stayed out three hours instead of two. The pair watched the parade from a distance as Dark was a little overwhelmed with how much was going on. A young man with a rainbow flag tied around his neck like a superhero approached and nervously asked Dark to put out his right hand. When he did so, a stamp was placed on his wrist, leaving behind a neat, rainbow-coloured heart. Once Dark had his heart literally on his sleeve, he began to open up a little more. He took Wilford’s hand in his as they watched the end of the parade. Then, before they began the walk home, he kissed the reporter in public. He had never done that before. People cheered, and the entity was somewhat emotional at that positive response.

Only one photo was taken over the whole day. A selfie of the couple. The pins and beads were on display as Dark kissed Wilford’s cheek. It was simple, yet alive with love and colour. Once the photo was saved on his phone, it became Dark’s wallpaper so he’d always have that reminder that things were not as bleak as they once were for him.

Love is love, and he has the chance to experience it for himself.

[boojersey]

VIC DO ALL THE ASKS BC I LOVE U AND WANT U TO HAVE FUN

*SWEATS* AYE AYE CAPN

cw for like some common lgbt+ topics such as dysphoria violence discrimination etc just. tread carefully if u get triggered easily by bad lgbt experiences

What do you identify as and what are your pronouns? -im a gay trans man and my pronouns are he/him but they/them is also acceptable!

How did you discover your sexuality, tell your story?-oh wow i originally thought i was a lesbian because i didnt even know what transgender was i just thought wishing i was a man meant i was butch and then i met my friend donnie in eighth grade who told me he was trans and it was kinda a huge slap in the face but with a sack of gay bricks? and i found out i dont like women through actually having sex with cis women and finally realizing it. really wasnt for me so now im just a gay man as opposed to queer as an umbrella term but i periodically refer to myself as such

Have you experienced being misgendered? What happened and how did you overcome it?-oh yea i literally was misgendered today i just kinda brush it off but it can be hard sometimes especially when people know im trans and do it

Who was the first person you told, how did they react?-i first told donnie about my gender, it was a thing where i went to bed the night i met him and was like  .. wait holy fuck and then the next day i was like BRO HOLY FUCK but sexuality? i dont really know???? it was so long ago it was honestly probably my group of friends on kik that i had in 2013 (u were included in that mister!!!!)

Describe what it was like coming out, what did you feel?-im not actually fully out but the first time someone who was an adult knew about my trans-ness was what really set in for me the fact that i could come out one day; my friends mom referred to me as seance (and like. obviously she respected my gender she has a trans kid) but it was just super jarring bc no adult had known yet abt my identity in any way and as a result i was rlly glad it was nighttime in that car bc i cried almost immediately; the first time i came out on my Own was to my cousin and he laughed in my face so that was pretty damn awful and its kinda funny cuz the bastard is bi so u would think hed have been accepting but n0pe!

If you’re out, how did your parents/guardians/friends react?-im out to my friends now ! and the reception was generally positive bc i think i do an ok job at picking ppl to be around in terms of morals so there was little bad reception

What is one question you hate people asking about your sexuality?-i hate when ppl ask if im gay as in for men or gay as in for women because im trans, i am a man so when i say im gay i feel like that should be easy enough to put 2 and 2 together but when they ask that i feel as if they still view me as a woman

Describe the style of clothing that you most often wear.-emo of the gods themselves it is absolute scene and emo vomit and i love it; its seriously hard for me to wear dresses and skirts without dysphoria and just general discomfort but i own a couple anyway bc theyre cute i just. never wear them

Who are your favourite lgbt+ ships?-my main thing at the moment is gerard/frank/grant morrison bc i love poly fics very dearly and gerard/bert because bert mccracken deserved better than gerawrds internalized homophobia lol

What does makeup mean to you? Do you wear any?-makeup to me is an androgynous thing so i wear eyeshadow a lot and lipstick sometimes, eyeshadow is easier on my eyes than eyeliner bc im allergic to a lot of makeup thats on the heavier side so if i put on eyeliner my eyes will water and burn throughout the day but with eyeshadow im mostly ok; other opinion is that makeup on Anyone can be sexy as hell if they do it for fun and wear literally what they truly want and not just what they think is accepted or what they Should wear

Do you experience dysphoria? If so, how does that affect you?-oh yeah my dysphoria is pretty debilitating if im gonna be honest; i used to have very little problems with it because my hold on reality was loose at best (before i was medicated to clarify) but now that i am almost completely Here my dysphoria is pretty bad and even just like. the knowledge that i have breasts is pretty awful; a few weeks ago i put on an outfit that i have to wear a victorias secret bra to fit properly in and just one look in the mirror had me sobbing and i had to change my clothes before i could leave the house and i havent worn a bra since because just the thought of showing off my chest makes this stark fuckin dread shoot through my veins but i also have dysphoria in regards to my voice that i discussed at my last trans therapy group meeting actually ; my voice has a tendency to bounce around my octave range so sometimes ill be like. excited then hear what i sound like. and ruin it for myself immediately u kno? im not even gonna talk about my dicksphoria bc thats just. awful. 

What is the stupidest thing you’ve heard said about the lgbt+ community?-ohhhhhhhh my god u know what? ive heard..so much .. that im gonna instead take this opportunity to mention my mother genuinely thinks dnd is satanic

What’s your favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?-the fact that were so strong. we are so fucking strong we deal with violence and opposition constantly and at staggering rates yet we stay strong and we continue loving through all of it, whether its in dark corners in secret or loudly in the streets we continue loving and do so with all of our beings because we know its our own truth and well gladly go to hell if it means we got to love on earth (not that everyone believes in hell or the idea that us gays go to hell but my point stands)

What’s your least favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?-we have this audacity to create divide (to the fault of mostly cis white gay men thank u very much) when what we need to do is love each other because we are different but at the end of the day we all need to remain in tandem and as a family or we will never get to where we need to in terms of acceptance and that means being uplifting and protecting our trans sisters of color, our disabled lgbt members, our autistic lgbt members, our anything past cis white gay man because we all need recognition, we all need love, and to exclude any letters of lgbt is to tear ourselves down and set ourselves on fire

Have you ever been to your cities pride event? Why or why not?-no :((( no one would drive me in the past and i dont think ill have a way to get there this year either

Who is your favourite lgbt+ Icon/Advocate/Celebrity?-brian molko! my bisexual, androgynistically-inclined father who birthed me at the tender age of 16 when i found placebo

Have you been in a relationship and how did you meet?-ya theres been a few and i dont rlly like to talk abt my relationships with anyone unless theyre online relationships so im just gonna leave it at that

What is your favourite lgbt+ book?-pantomime by laura lam! its one of if not my favorite book to this day

Have you ever faced discrimination? What happened?-y a every damn day bitch ! example is when i was deadnamed by my psychiatrist while she knows full well what my name is the other day; another is the countless times i get called a lesbian ???? and when strict lesbians ask me out i get a very bad taste in my mouth (i understand full well that sexuality is fluid, these are lesbians that spit the ‘penis is gross blegh’ rhetoric)

Your Favorite lgbt+ movie or show?-uh im just gonna say preacher bc its my favorite show altogether n cass is bi/pan/something similar

Who are some of your favourite lgbt+ bloggers?-@ble3dmagic is my boyfriend in crime (not rlly thats a joke) and @musicalsense​ is my sunburnt Brother

Which lgbt+ slur do you want to reclaim?-queer! i also use f*ggot a lot when talking about myself and my friends that are ok with it

Have you ever gone to a gay bar, or a drag show, how was it?-i went to a drag show and it was so amazing and one of the first times i felt accepted in my own community that i cried

How do you self-identify your gender, and what does that mean to you?-well i identify as a man with no leaning towards womanhood or nonbinaryhood in any way, its just . man . but in terms of Expression i am quite androgynous bc i can rlly appreciate femininity (NOT the same as womanhood) and being a man to me means just that ive always wanted to grow up with that “gender role” like i always wish i was raised as a stereotypical parent would raise a son and ive always been more interested in stereotypically masculine things and people since i can even remember and i feel like puberty was just this unpreventable spiral into something i didnt want. i didnt want it at all . this is tmi but when i got my first period i cried my eyes out bc the idea of being called a Woman repulsed me so much and since i didnt even know that being trans was a concept i was just this scared puppy full of confusion and fear aimed at myself because all the stuff i heard i was supposed to be proud of the change but i wasnt i was so ashamed of it and the idea of being called a woman made me sick to my stomach and i just wish i could go back in time and hold myself and tell me itll be alright 

Are you interested in having children? Why or why not?-absoLutely not i hate kids (and by that i mean i hate being around them and the culture that surrounds having children; i do not treat kids like shit and i do not act like hating children is a personality trait; i get migraines and usually the second a child starts screaming or crying i am on the floor of my brain writhing in dire pain and i have absolutely no desire to support another human life when frankly i cant even support myself; its also just not a lifestyle i want to live)

What identity advice would you give your younger self?-god so fucking much. so fucking much. so many things i wish i could say to myself

What do you think of gender roles in relationships?-i think if someone wants to adhere to them then hell yea go ahead just dont expect others to do it or try to tell other people its a Norm or something; theyre for the most part christian in nature so i dont have any desire to follow them myself, i want a relationship (if any) thats more of a coexistence if that makes sense, like. roommates plus dick

Anything else you want to share about your experience with gender?-i always used to anxiously chew on the idea that my chest dysphoria is just me holding disdain for the shape and size of my breasts but let me tell you. the second i put on my binder for the first time i immediately started crying because i was so overwhelmed by the fact that i was looking at something one step closer to myself and i know full well i am never going to have that doubt again. this week has been exponentially cathartic and therapeutic for me

What is something you wish people know about being lgbt+?-i want the cisheteros to know that nothing they learn about us is new. everything about us has been around for so so long but has been silenced and erased to the point where a lot of us dont even know many things about our rich and beautiful history

Why are proud to be lgbt+?-honestly? its hard for me to not just straight up say im not proud of my identity. its taken me years to stamp down the plain grieving toward my identity and wishing i could have the easier path but frankly? the fact that i am choosing this path of hardship and hell on earth just to be who i truly am i think speaks volumes of my pride in my identity at this point; further back in my archive by a few years my posts are littered with sentiments of bitterness wherein i stated that i hate being trans and not just cis but i like to think ive finished hating myself for my identity. i like to think im proud now. to ask me why is to ask too much of me, all i know now is that i am proud and thats enough for me right now.

[wildernessuntothemselves]

1.☕what is your opinion on transgenderism? I have a bisexual friend and another pansexual friend, they can't come out to public so they've only come out to some people who they trust, including me (i'm straight). So this one time we all sat down with couple other people in which, one is a big gay shipper fan, and two others who are homophobes (they don't know about my other friends being bi and pan).

2.☕It all started with us discussing about trangenders and they all shared their opinions about how they think it's not right and that it means they don't accept themselves at all etc. I personally have no opinion about trans people, i believe everybody must do whatever satisfies them. Most girls are fond of makeup because it makes us feel beautiful and better about ourselves, so transgenders are doing the same as well.3.☕The topic later drifted to gays and lesbians. That is when it triggered me the most because those same "friends" of mine who always showed their pride of being lgbt to me and our other friends, were being complete hypocrite infront of those homophobes. They were expressing all kinds of hate about gay people, including the girl who ships gay people all the time. I thought they were just saying it 'cause the homophobes were with us but they said they actually meant it when i asked them later.4. ☕Like how tf are you even a part of such a thing when you hate on it ? I don't know whom to trust anymore tbh 'cause even if i'm not lgbt, i don't just go around hating on it. *sigh* oh well now that was a big one ☕ i'm sorry tho 😂 This is a long one so I’ll answer it under the cut

First off, as regards to your friends that is very strange. I’d understand if they had unresolved issues about their sexuality but you said they’re proud of being lgbt so I don’t get it. But I guess many people are contradictory and they may have conflicting feelings about it like women being misogynistic. However it’s disgusting to engage in any type of hate speech for whatever reason (other than to cover for yourself if you’re in a dangerous situation). As for my opinion of transexuality. I honestly still haven’t come to a conclusion yet and I probably won’t for some time. Half of me supports them and half of me doesn’t so here are some of the thoughts that run through my head1. where is the line between gender as a social construct and gender as a biological thing. You mentioned makeup but makeup being a girl thing is totally a social construct, so are dresses, the color pink, having long hair, etc. There is nothing inherently feminine or masculine about these stuff so is a male who likes to “be” feminine a girl in a boy’s body or just a boy who likes feminine things? where is the line that after it you’re considered transgender? Is it just the “feeling” of being a girl? but what does that mean really? 2. is it a mental disorder? I know some people stopped reading already but for those who continue please hear me out. I know how much the lgbt community loathes being made to have a mental disorder and I understand that. This is a mixed point. On the one hand I know that people who are attracted to the same sex like myself were (and are) called mentally ill and unnatural like transgender people are but for me transgenderism (is that a word?) is closer to body dysmorphia than homosexuality. There are people in this world who want to cut off their arm bec they feel like they’re amputee and they can’t stand having this arm. Do we as doctors just go ahead and chop off their arm for them? No we treat their mental illness. So if you say that you’re actually a girl and you want us to chop off your penis don’t we have to think about it first? As a doctor this dilemma really bothers me bec here I am chopping off a perfectly healthy and functional body part and permanently mutilating a person’s body based on their psychological state. Isn’t this against our oaths? 3. Hormones ESPECIALLY for young kids. It boggles my mind that some parents actually give their kids puberty blockers and stuff like that KIDS hormones aren’t a harmless thing not only physically but also mentally. As you can see my main issue with transgenderism is the medical interventions sometimes employed for them. I think we as the medical community need to do much more extensive research into the matter before we start hacking up people or giving them dangerous drugs4. ok so what about transgender people who don’t transition, Again I think we need to look into why they don’t feel like they’re their biological sex and what really is gender and see if we can reconcile this5. intersex people and 3rd genders in certain cultures also make me lean towards transgenderism/transsexuality being a normal thing. I need to read more about them. I’m a very scientific person so for me the most important thing is to do research to get to the bottom of this and find out where the issue lies and if transitioning improves the person’s mental health long term or if it doesn’t have an effect/makes it worse. Honestly I’m willing to accept the results either way bec even tho my points make it seem like I’m very anti-trans, I’m really just conflicted bec of my job. I want to help people not cause them more harm. 

[abanomath]

Rant time: DC’s Tone Deafness

So I don’t really like ranting or being negative, but DC Universe recently released an article to celebrate pride month about the Top 5 canon and non-canon LGBTQA+ relationships in Young Justice.

And the tone deafness is just off the charts. Like most of the world, I’m not American so I needed someone to screen-cap the actual article for me. I’m going to organize my thoughts and go down.

General

For one, its pretty obvious the writer didn’t look at the source material. This article sounds like it was written by someone filled in on the basics and told to write a good PR article for DC.

There are a lot of little details in the story, such as when the writer claims that they “showcased even more LGBTQA+ protagonists in season 3″ implying they had previously, which they hadn’t. One character was implied to be bisexual in the comics, never on screen, but more on that below. Season 3 was the first LGBTQA+ rep for the show.

Also its always a bit tone deaf when in an article celebrating LGBTQA+ and diversity in your show, that you have a list of 5 “ships”, of which only ONE is actually a couple in canon. Not only did they need to resort to non-canon ones, they included people that can’t be called a “ship” or couple.

1. Kaldur/Wyynde

This is the only actual LGBTQA+ couple on the list that is canon in the show, and I liked them. But I can’t deny that Kaldur who was a main cast member for the past two season’s had a vastly reduced role (compared to straight cis white characters like Dick and Conner). He was basically written out of the first half of the season, and then his relationship was really present for 1.5 - 2 episodes max. This in a season that was marked with excessive attention given to heterosexual relationships (like seriously, basically every character was in some form of relationship on-screen). The one healthy LGBTQA relationship got less attention than Black Lightning and Dr. Jace’s romance, something that ultimately went nowhere, Dick/Barbara, even Megan/Conner when Megan was also essentially written out of the season.

2. Marie Logan and Rita Farr

They really dug deep for this “ship”. Ironically, they start this by talking about the scene in Young Justice #25, when Queen B’s powers work on Garfield’s mother. This was the first implication her being bisexual. And of course, she also dies in this scene, so starting off with a “Bury your gays” trope where Marie’s queerness literally got her killed and orphaned her son.

There isn’t much more to say about this ship, because it literally doesn’t exist. The shipping community for this is so small you have to go digging deep into tags to find even hints of it. The article even basically says this, posing the ship as a question. As being interesting. (Does it count as Bury Your Gays when both woman are dead before their relationship is even hinted at?)

In other words this article about celebrating LGBTQA ships literally had to try and CREATE A SHIP to reach 5 ships. Despite the fact there are plenty of LGBTQ fanon ships (Birdflash being the most prominent one left off the list). It really hits at the thing I said above, this is a “write us a good PR article with the barest amount of effort put into it” situation.

3. Harper Row and Halo

Oh boy don’t get me started on this. There are so many problems with how they did Halo this season, she is basically tone deaf personified. (For the purpose of this rant, I’ll be using the “she” pronouns for Halo, because I have no choice but to assume they are her preference, unless the show purposely spent the entire season mis-gendering her, but I don’t think her characterization really supports that she prefers “her/she”).

I’ve had a problem with Halo from the start, because she is basically an attempt for the writers to shallowly include representation without having to actually deal with it. She is Muslim representation, but not actually Muslim (as she confirms on the show). She wears the Hijab because she feels like it. She is genderqueer, but they never once talk about her pronouns. She refers to herself as “not feeling like a boy or a girl” and constantly refers to herself in the third person, but everyone uses “she/her” pronouns without asking her. They even have a scene where she informs them she is genderqueer, and its never brought up again without asking any actual follow up questions or awareness. They also infantalize and treat her as a little girl.

Additionally, she falls into one of my greatest pet peeves - she is genderqueer but for fantasy-scifi reasons. For those that follow genderqueer or transgender characters in media, this is a very common trope. Essentially, the trope is when someones gender identity is caused by/determined from otherworldly experiences.

This trope bugs me because it completely undermines the point of representation. Representation in media is supposed to show the audience that these are natural human experiences and that people like this exist and are normal. But the trope ensures that the experiences are not normal human experiences.

(and don’t even get me started on the fact that this show has made New Genesis tech gendered before, with Sphere. And even gender the bioship in the same season they pull this for Halo).

Lastly, she also falls within the “promiscuous bisexual” trope, with the very kiss this article praises as THE FIRST LGBT KISS ON SCREEN for the show. This is a problematic trope that DC seems to love. Basically, this scene has Halo cheating on her boyfriend with another young classmate, engaging in two kisses with her.

Now I’m not going to say that all LGBTQA+ relationships need to be wholesome one true loves. Problematic behaviour like Halo and Harper’s is a story telling tool. But the fact that the LGBTQA+ was told going into the season there would be LGBT rep so they should watch, and this was the first rep we got 18 episodes into the season? It felt a bit like a slap in the face. They could’ve had her break up with Brion beforehand, or any number of different ways that would even keep the scene in tact.

And the relationship doesn’t really go anywhere anyways. Harper doesn’t really remain part of the season going forward, Halo and her boyfriend continue their relationship after it was revealed until the end of the season.

This is ultimately my problem with Halo. There are a few tropes that basically are summed up as “writers put all their diversity into one character” which is basically what Halo is. Each of these qualities, from faith to gender identity to sexual orientation could’ve been a fleshed out character arc (oh! I forgot to mention she also falls into the “My gender identity isn’t cis, so my sexual orientation is also bi/pan/gay” trope). Instead all the diverse qualities of Halo are addressed shallowly as the show-runners pat themselves on the back.

4. Bluepulse

I’ve ranted a lot so I’m not going to go crazy on this point. You can probably find tons of posts about the drama between Bluepulse Shippers and the show, which again makes their inclusion kind of tone-deaf. Bluepulse shippers have been called disgusting by the fandom for the three year age gap, an age gap that was never confirmed on screen and you had to go digging in Greg’s personal message board to know (resulting in many people shipping them not knowing their ages at all).

In addition, the showrunners made it clear they did not like this ship over the several years the show has been off the air. And in Season 3 they give Jaime a girlfriend....who is a lesbian in the comics. Now Traci and Jaime did date in the comics before she came out, and this is another Earth. But when the sole purpose of their relationship being on screen was to tell the audience that bluepulse wasn’t happening, choosing a lesbian character to play the cis straight girlfriend is a bit of a slap in the face. again.

5. Bart Allen and Eduardo

Queerbaiting, nuff said.

For those not in the know, Ed is a character introduced as a runaway in Season 2, but he doesn’t really interact with Bart until mid-season 3. There is an episode where a group of heroes go to a carnival, and Ed and Bart appear to be on a date. They are in a group with all couples, except for Virgil. Virgil laments being the only person there without a significant other, implying that Bart and Ed are together. Additionally, Bart and Ed do everything that the other couples do together. It was pretty heavy-handed that the couples were there on dates.

And fans liked this! Even if Bluepulse wasn’t happening, Bart may still be bisexual or gay. This was made worse by Greg retweeting and liking Ed/Bart content, and not giving a straight answer on whether they were dating.

Which obviously, creates the expectation among LGBTQA+ fans that they will get together. They don’t. And later at a convention, one of the main writers (not Greg) said something like “its funny how the fans see relationships between characters differently from our intent” when asked a question about them. Essentially confirming that yeah, they didn’t have any actual content for them planned anyway. Though they did have an addendum that they may build on the fan reception/view of the relationship in the future (basically saying, maybe they’ll be canon).

As much as I’d like to be optimistic that they actually will get together and we’ll get a LGBTQ relationship that is in the spotlight for once, I’m not. I’ll be happy to be proved wrong on this point.

And that was my TEDtalk about how tone-deaf DC patting themselves on the back for LGBTQA+ content in Young Justice is. Especially when other animated shows do so much better with fewer episodes and screen time.

[genderonthescreen-blog]

Queer Representation: How Can We Get The Gays to Watch Our Movie?

The Vito Russo Test is the queer equivalent to the Bechdel Test (which tests the representation of women in films). It was created by GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) and is used to test the representation of LGBTQ+ people in film. The way a film passes the test is if there is an “identifiably lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender” character who isn’t defined by their sexuality and/or gender identity, and who is significant to the plot. Despite the fact this test is quite easy to pass, most films do not. Out of the 109 films released by major studios in 2017 only 14 had LGBTQ+ characters in them (that’s 12.8%). Gay men are the most represented out of those 14 films (64% or 9 out of the 14 films feature a gay man that pass the test) while trans people are the least represented in 2017 (zero out of the 14 films featured transgender characters). These numbers are insanely low, and shows that there is a clear problem with the representation of LGBTQ+ people in films.

But, even in the movies that feature LGBTQ+ characters, how well are they being represented, really? Films like Call Me By Your Name (2017), Carol (2015), Blue Is The Warmest Color (2013), and Brokeback Mountain (2005) have all been praised as iconic queer movies with great representation, but how great is this representation? Right off the bat you can see that all of these characters are white. Not a huge surprise when it comes to Hollywood, considering how bad they are at representing people of color, but, still, not all queer people are white, obviously—Marsha P. Johnson, anybody? How about happy endings? Shouldn’t queer people be allowed to see a relationship like their own end happily? Well, it seems not. In Call Me By Your Name, they break up; in Blue Is The Warmest Color, they break up; in Brokeback Mountain, they break up and one of them dies (the good-olde “bury your gays” trope https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/06/30/queerbaiting-bury-your-gays-tv_a_23005000/ )! Carol seems to be the only one that has a semi-happy ending. Although, Therese (Rooney Mara) and Carol (Cate Blanchett) do breakup at one point, at the end of the film it is implied that they get back together. An implication is a we can get apparently. Oversexualization is also an issue. All of these movies have semi-graphic sex scenes in them, with Blue Is The Warmest Color’s sex scenes are borderline pornography—and definitely from the male gaze. Now, sex isn’t the problem here, if a director wants to show two characters getting it on, they very well should be allowed to do so! The problem is that the only kind of movies that are popular and feature queer people at the forefront are romantic dramas (usually tragic) that are very heavy on the sexual discovery. This would be fine if there were just as many goofy LGBTQ+ romantic comedies or action movies with queer leads as there are LGBTQ+ romantic tragedies.

Now, that’s not to say things aren’t getting better! With the release and success of Love, Simon in 2018, a romantic comedy about a teenage boy coming out as gay, things are, hopefully, starting to look up. However, there has recently been a new disturbing trend when it come to LGBTQ+ representation in films. A film will announce that there is an “openly gay” character in their movie before the film is released. Thus, attracting a large queer audience that is sorely disappointed when they realize “openly gay” actually means “not openly gay at all.” Take Beauty and the Beast (2017) for example. Before the release of Beauty and the Beast, Dir. Bill Condon announced that there was going to be an “exclusively gay moment” (WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN?) in the film involving LeFou (Josh Gad), Gaston’s groveling sidekick. Fans were obviously excited! But, when the movie came out, what we got was very a stereotypical depiction of a gay man (who is supposed to be crushing on Gaston?), and one moment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sadujj45Y90 blink and you’ll miss it) where LeFou accidentally starts dancing with another man and… that’s it—wow, how groundbreaking.

While there is at least a small moment in Beauty and the Beast, other films that use this tactic to get a more diverse audience don’t even bother following through. Before the release of the much anticipated Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), screenwriter Jonathan Kasdan announced that Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) is pansexual. This revelation prompted fans to go crazy, but when the movie came out there was nothing, besides some semi-flirty lines and an “implied” romantic relationship with a droid (okay…), explicit in the film that showed Lando’s pansexuality. Some people (https://lwlies.com/articles/queerbaiting-solo-lando-calrissian/ ) are calling this trend, a new from of queerbaiting, and going by the definition (“the practice of hinting at, but then not actually depicting, a same-sex romantic relationship between characters in a work of fiction, mainly in film or television” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queerbaiting ) I’m have to agree. Except, this kind of queerbaiting is almost worse because the “hinting” starts before the film comes out. Therefore filmmakers are literally using a the possibility of a potentially queer character as bait to get more LGBTQ+ moviegoers into their theaters.

There are other, less nefarious, examples of this kind of queerbaiting. Tessa Thompson, who plays Valkyrie in Thor Ragnarok (2017), made a post on twitter before the film came out about how her character is bisexual and how she wanted that to come through on the big screen. However, she was quick to add that Valkyrie’s sexuality is never explicitly shown in Thor Ragnarok (https://www.avclub.com/thor-ragnarok-ultimately-cut-the-one-scene-that-confir-1820047758 check out this article). It’s clear that Thompson wan’t trying to get more LGBTQ+ people to see Thor Ragnarok, she was just trying to spread the word about her character’s sexuality—Valkyrie is canonically bisexual in the comic books.The character of Albus Dumbledore, the grandfatherly headmaster of Hogwarts from the Harry Potter film and book series, could also be another example of this kind of queerbaiting. However, unlike all of the other examples, Dumbledore’s sexuality was revealed by author JK Rowling after the release of the last Harry Potter book in 2007 (https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=3755544&page=1 check out this article from that year talking about it). Dumbledore’s sexuality was never explicit in the Harry Potter books or movies, but recently Rowling has started another film series that takes place in the Potter universe (but during the 1920s) called Fantastic Beasts. Before the release of the second installment, it was announced that Jude Law would be playing a young Dumbledore in that next film (Fantastic Beasts and the Crimes of Grindelwald), and people began to ask if Dumbledore’s sexuality is going to be addressed in these films. Not much was said by Rowling, but before the movie was released Dir. David Yates said Dumbledore’s sexuality is not “explicitly” shown in the film. Fans were obviously upset be this—myself included. However, after seeing the movie, I feel like it’s safe to say only a person in serious denial would claim that Dumbledore is straight after watching The Crimes of Grindelwald. There isn’t anything “explicit” in the movie (Dumbledore doesn’t say “I’m gay” or kisses a man) but the relationship between Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald, the antagonist of the series and Dumbledore’s ex-lover, is shown or alluded to in in more ways than one—not explicitly telling the audience about his sexuality is in character for Dumbledore, who has always been secretive. As a fan of Harry Potter and the Fantastic Beasts films, I hope in future installments Dumbledore’s sexuality will be more explored—and it should, especially since the main antagonist is his ex-boyfriend!

Queer representation is important. The constant censoring of LGBTQ+ people and relationships in media needs to end. It’s often said that this kind of censorship is to protects kids from exposure to “inappropriate” content. News flash, there are kids out there who are queer! (Because queer people have always been queer.) I remember when I was a kid how big of an impact seeing queer characters and couples in film and TV were for me. Seeing characters like Tara (Amber Benson) and Willow (Alyson Hannigan) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer made me feel like I wasn’t alone and that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. Even though queer representation in film is still lacking it’s getting better, and it’s getting even better on TV shows! The Legend of Korra, and Steven Universe are two kids shows that feature LGBTQ+ couples. Sense 8, Orange is the New Black, Queer Eye and Black Mirror (specifically season 3’s episode San Junipero) are all Netflix original series that have great LGBTQ+ representation and/or are LGBTQ+ centric—trans characters played by actual trans actors? YES! Things are looking up and I have high hopes for the future when it comes to queer representation.

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Check out these cool sources!

https://lwlies.com/articles/queerbaiting-solo-lando-calrissian/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/01/disney-launches-first-exclusively-gay-moment-beauty-beast/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2018/05/17/lando-calrissian-pansexual-solo-star-wars-reaction/620566002/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/movies/jude-law-dumbledore-gay.html

https://www.thedailybeast.com/glaad-report-hollywood-is-failing-lgbt-characters-in-its-movies

https://books.google.com/books?id=AoQrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT143&dq=the+vito+russo+test&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj25Yj_oaDfAhXwx1kKHZODBU0Q6AEIMDAB#v=onepage&q=the%20vito%20russo%20test&f=false

https://www.glaad.org/sri/2018/vitorusso

https://www.glaad.org/sri/2018/overview

How about this cooler bibliography!

https://books.google.com/books?id=UWtECwAAQBAJ&pg=PT203&dq=queerbaiting&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJ6M3zzprfAhWu11kKHT6ZAcwQuwUIMTAB#v=onepage&q=queerbaiting&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=f6YwSZlsyJMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=lgbt+film&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjprcyuz5rfAhXSq1kKHbkGAzgQuwUILTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=jI_IHFUidlwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=lgbt+film&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjprcyuz5rfAhXSq1kKHbkGAzgQuwUIUTAH#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=ROhSbOQIzmYC&pg=PA31&dq=the+hays+code&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6tc3zzJrfAhXIqFkKHaOoAUQQuwUITDAG#v=onepage&q=the%20hays%20code&f=false

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/we-need-to-talk-about-lgbt-representation-apparently_us_5a3d4dede4b06cd2bd03da68

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0HsPIquRmc

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/05/22/lgbt-representation-in-hollywood-has-somehow-got-even-worse/

Photo credits go to Netflix.